PolitiFact: Is the federal government trying to mind-control students?

The Common Core education standards have been adopted in 45 out of the 50 states, but those who question whether or not it's a good thing for states to follow common education standards are making their arguments known.

Recently, the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition listed their reasons on their website as to why they are opposed to Common Core.

Here is what the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition posted:

"The goal of Common Core is to instill federally determined attitudes and mindsets in students including political and religious beliefs."

We turned to our partners at PolitiFact to see how that statement rated.  Angie Holan, the Editor of PolitiFact, says that this statement rates PANTS ON FIRE on the Truth-O-Meter, the lowest rating a statement could earn.

Holan set the groundwork for the fact-check by noting that Common Core is about standards, not about curriculum.  In other words, Common Core is about setting standards for the knowledge and skills that students should have at each grade level.

Determining the curriculum is left up to local school boards, districts, and teachers.

"We checked Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards, and it includes information about the political system in the United States, as well as information about the world's major religions," Holan said.  "We saw nothing in the standards that either directly or indirectly told students what beliefs they should hold, whether it be political or religious."

PolitiFact contacted the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition to request clarification and sources related to their claim.  The Coalition cited a report authored by Education Liberty Watch.  That report focuses on the National Education Data Model, which is a database containing hundreds of pieces of data. 

Among the data elements are "voting status," "religious affiliation," and "religious consideration."

PolitiFact attempted to find the same data cited by the Coalition from NEDM, but could not find it on the NEDM website.  PolitiFact then contacted officials involved with NEDM, who did not dispute the information as presented.

PolitiFact found that the list of data elements do contain some caveats.  Jack Buckley, the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, says that this data is already something that is being voluntarily collected by school districts. 

Buckley says that because it is a voluntary model that states can use, they can choose exactly the data elements they want to use, and ignore others they aren't interested in.

Helping states or districts organize their data is something that the feds have done for many years, long before Common Core, he said.

Buckley also says that the federal government has been helping states manage these information databases for years, long before Common Core was ever proposed.

PolitiFact asked why this data was being collected and what purpose it would serve.  Alexander Jackl, the chief architect of Choice Solutions, Inc., an education data software company, pointed out that data pertaining to religion may be useful to private and religious schools, for example.

As to whether or not schools here in Florida would be collecting this data, PolitiFact reached out to several school districts and got a resounding "No!" as the answer.  The Florida Department of Education also weighed in.  Cheryl Etters, spokesperson for FDOE, stated that they do not require school districts to ask, nor has any plans to ask, about voting status, political affiliation, or religious affiliation.

Holan says that, based on the information provided by Florida's Department of Education and people associated with data collection companies relating to education, there is no legitimate proof that Common Core standards are being used to force students to conform to a certain way of thinking politically, or to follow a pre-determined religion.

PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter rates this claim PANTS ON FIRE.